(a) I decided to do that for the analog clock because it is easier to create, as a “slower start”. If you look at the Digital Clock sample, I am using the fps of the scene in the control, as you suggest. However, using a property of the scene does not work well when we link the object, since the scene itself will be linked, so I wanted to delay that explanation a bit. I will talk more about linking and appending in a video in the end though.

(b) That would have worked as well. Any “behind the scenes” values can be done without objects or bones and just values directly, but I chose to do it through the location of an empty to make it more visual. However, having a driven property added to the Clock empty would expose a value that the user should not see, since it can’t change it directly. So even if I decided to add a total_seconds property, I would not want to add it to the clock empty anyway.
But you are right, I should probably have mentioned that in the tutorial.

To really get a list of everything available though, you would have to check inside Blender. To do this, you open the Python Console window, type “bpy.app.driver_namespace” (without quotes) and then press CTRL+SPACE. A list will appear.

However, unless I am blind, in default Blender this list seems to be identical to the Python documentation link from above, so I would just stick to that since it has good explanations of what each function does and what input it wants

Hi there
Great tut Gustav. I’ve searched quite a long time for something like that. Comprehensive and clear explenation. Worth every penny spent on this dvd. Hope You do something more in the future.
Thanks for Your knowledge
V.

great insight of how Blender drivers work and also some other nice comands/shortcuts/tips that I didn’t know about.

this tutorial sparked some ideas about precision modeling/dimensioning in Blender.

the watch tutorial is also nice if only to keep track of time spent in the Blender viewport

in the future i would be interested in seeing more material about deforming/driving values of simple meshes with the purpose of simulating the inventor/solidworks CAD math formula expresion editors inside Blender.

also I am interested in ways to replicate or reach the same or similar functionality regarding matting/constraing/driving assemblies from inventor/solidworks CAD environments inside Blender.